Joyce Meyer - Stress Management (Gateway Church)

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Love. You can be seated. Well, I'm happy to be here. I get to come here twice a year now and do the services on Saturday, both on Sunday. I just, I love it here. It's a great church. They live what they preach. Amen? Well, we have... You saw Dave bring me up here. Dave's awesome. We've been married 56 years, and we have four children, of course, all grown, and twelve grandchildren (lots of money), and six great-grandchildren (and so, lots more money), and we have so many birthdays that my secretary has to send me notices on whose birthday it is today, so I make sure that I call them. But the youngest one is going to be four in July, and he is quite a character.

His name is Brody, and he screams. Has anybody ever had a kid that screams, like these real shrill screams? And he does it sometimes when he's happy, but he does it when he's upset. And he was having a bad day a few weeks ago, and he was out with his mom, and he was just acting up and crabbing and complaining about everything, and nothing was making him happy. And so, she's just a wonderful mother, and she said, "Brody, come here. We're going to pray". So, she hugs him and says, "Father, we ask you to help Brody be happy today and be a sweet boy and have a good attitude". And she went on and on, and when she got finished, he said, "Not! Amen". I think maybe sometimes that's what some of us say to God, "Not! Amen". Well, this weekend I'm going to do a little three-part series on dealing with stress.

And so, tonight, first service tomorrow, second service. It'll all be different messages. So, if you just want to make it a little weekend seminar on stress. I'm sure none of you probably really need that, just like you don't need any teaching on anxiety, but you're welcome to come. And I always get to get tested on what I'm teaching on. So, we got here, and they had given my hotel room away. Wasn't that sweet? And the church here paid for it in advance. They even paid for it last night, and I wasn't even in it, just to make sure they didn't give it away. I don't know who was mixed up about what, but they told us they were cleaning it. And then they told us that all that was left to do was for the manager to inspect it. And then they told us the people that were in it hadn't checked out yet.

So, we got here, and we ended up with four single rooms. I was in Mike and Penny's room. Dave was in somebody else's room. Somebody else was in somebody else's room. And Lord only knows where we'll be when we get back tonight, but we're believing we'll get to sleep. So, for a while, Dave was in the room I was in where I was going to study and pray and be somewhat spiritual, and he gets the ball game on his phone. So, I'm like, "Thank you, Jesus". "Strike one". I said, "This is not going to work. You got to go somewhere else". So, anyway, I am qualified to teach on this subject. All right, let me start with a question. Do you ever complain about all you have to do? Always. Well, she's very definite. Okay, well, you know, I was complaining to God one time about everything I had to do. "Nobody can be expected to do all this". "I don't know how you think anybody can do". And the Lord spoke to me. He said, "You made your schedule. If you don't like it, change it".

So, we'll just kind of start with that. You're the one that has said yes to all the things you do. Now, some things we have to do, but if we're going to be honest, we all have to admit that there are a lot of things that we don't have to do. We do them, and we don't even do them for the right reasons. We do them because we don't want somebody to get mad at us. We do them because we're nosy, and we don't want everybody else to go and us not know what's going on. Amen? We just do them because we've always done them. We don't even know why we're doing it anymore. It's just, I don't know. That's just what we do. And if any one of you were to go home and make a list of everything you're doing, and then ask yourself, each one, if it's bearing good fruit in your life, and if you cut out the ones that aren't bearing any fruit, you'd have plenty of time left. You're looking at me like, "Nah, it couldn't be that easy".

So, stress is the disease of the century. It's a multi-billion dollar business. Between counseling, drugs, books, stress management seminars, and more, stress is making more money than anything else. And I just want to say this up front, and you can kind of tuck this in your pocket. God will never give you more to do than what you can do peacefully. So, remember that. If what all you're doing is stealing your peace, then it's not God giving it to you. And I know what I'm talking about because I almost killed myself trying to do what I thought God wanted me to do and found out that there was a lot of reasons why I was doing it that really weren't all reasons why I should have been doing it. Stress is all around us. And I kept praying for the stressful things to go away, for the problems to go away.

And I finally realized, you know what? The world is going to change, but it's probably not going to get better. It may get worse. And I'm not saying that as a negative statement. All we have to do is look and see what's going on, and we're going to have more to deal with in a year or two years than we do now. So, if anything's going to change, it's got to be us. We have to learn how to handle things in a different way. Okay? John 14:27, Jesus said, and I'm going to quote the Amplified, My peace I leave with you. Not as the world gives do I give unto you, but my own special peace I now give and bequeath unto you. So, stop allowing yourselves to be upset and disturbed and don't permit yourself to be fearful and intimidated.

So, this is a two-part thing. Really, to be honest, we don't even need to pray for peace. What we need to do is access the peace that God's already given us. Actually, Jesus has already done every single thing that He needs to do for us to have peaceful, fruitful, wonderful lives. He has. All we need to do is read the book and do what the book says. You say, "Well, I can't help it. I can't help it if I get upset". Well, actually, that's not true. You can. How many of you can feel upset when it's coming? It kind of starts down here somewhere. Can you feel it when it's coming? Okay, the thing to do is stop it before it gets to your mouth, because as soon as you start talking, you're going to get even more upset than you were before, and then you're probably going to upset somebody else, and then they're going to upset you more.

I have actually learned how to be sensitive to when a conversation between me and Dave is about to go in the wrong direction. And I've actually become so hungry for peace that I am now willing, when it gets to that point, to just shut up. That wasn't something I was willing to do before. No, I was going to have the last word, and I was going to prove to him that he was wrong, and I was right. But you know what? Being right is highly overrated. I mean, it's a pride thing. Actually, you can't even have conflict without pride, the Bible says. You can't even have it unless pride is there. So, if you want to have peace, you have to really want it bad. And you have to want it bad enough to be willing to make changes yourself, not to want everybody around you to change or to want all your circumstances to change, but to ask God to show you how to change.

Now, I don't know if you're not willing to do that, but if you're not, you can be miserable another year, and I'll come back next year and tell you the same thing. There's not a lot of answers to some of the things that we deal with. In this issue, you have two choices. We can continue to be stressed out until we fall apart, or we can learn to not be affected through it by not allowing it to get in us. The things around us aren't going to change, but we can learn to not allow it to get in us. I remember when my kids were little, and I had so many, I call them fits, just, you know, and we had four kids, and you sit down at the dinner table to eat, and it seemed like every night somebody spilled their drink. And all tables aren't like this now, but back in those days, every table had a split down the middle so you could pull it apart and put a leaf in it.

Well, it seemed like the real trick was to get to the liquid before it got to the crack, because you hadn't had the table apart in a long time and there was stuff in there. And if the liquid got to it, especially if it was milk or something that would sour, you had no choice when the meal was over but to pull the table apart and get in there and scrape and clean until you got it all out. So, I really got upset when the kids would spill it. It would go under all the bowls and under the table, get to the crack, run down the table legs, and I'm under the table screaming and yelling. "We cannot have one meal in this house and have it in peace! I do not understand! I cook".

Well, really, I was the one stealing the peace. One time I was under there having my little fit, and the Lord spoke to my heart, and He said, "You know, Joyce, no matter how much you rant and rave, this is not going to run back up the table legs, across the table and back into their glasses". So, He simply said, "You need to learn how to go with the flow". So, sometimes if something is happening, I couldn't do anything about that situation at the hotel. We tried. Trust me, we tried. They said, "Well, we have one of our ambassador guests". I mean, I guess that's somebody with a lot of points. They go to that hotel a lot. "And we can't just tell them they have to leave". And I was thinking, "Well, you could have another ambassador guest if you would treat me right". But I passed the test, not with flying colors, but I did pass.

And I even acted like a Christian. Imagine that. And we don't always act like Christians in situations like that. It's like, better get the cross off your neck and the bumper sticker off your car before anybody finds out. Fast forward 40 years. It's amazing what time does for you. Fast forward 40 years, and a couple of weeks ago, I get up really early, so it's probably like 5 o'clock in the morning, and I got to have my Jesus time before any noise starts. The day goes much better if I have that. And I make my coffee, every morning, make my coffee, have my certain cup I put my coffee in. Well, that morning I made the coffee, it was in the cup, the foam was on the top, everything was good. And I don't know what I did, but somehow or another I dropped the cup and it hit the marble counter, shattered the cup. Coffee went all over the place. Glass went all over the place.

And I just, honestly, I can tell you, I did not feel a thing. I just looked at it, and I said, "Well, I guess I'll clean that up". I've come a long way from being under the table throwing fits. So, if you stick with God, and you stick with the Word, what does the Bible say in 2 Corinthians 3:18? If we look into His Word, we will be changed, or transformed, into His image, from glory to glory to glory. So, if you haven't made it all the way there yet, don't be upset with yourself. Just keep growing. That's all. God's not mad if you haven't arrived. He just wants you to keep going and keep growing. Amen?

All right. You know, Jesus was surrounded by stressful situations: rejected by family and friends, accused of being evil, His disciples needed a lot of correction. They really weren't very mature. They argued about who was the greatest and just all kinds of things that you think, "You picked them"? Prayed all night. He didn't get them accidentally. He prayed all night and then picked them. Maybe it was to give us hope, I don't know. He was mentoring them for the job of carrying the gospel to the whole world. Surely sometimes He was a little disappointed in the way they behaved. Huge crowds followed Him everywhere that He went, and they all wanted something. Do you ever get a little stressed out because you feel like everybody that comes near you wants something? Nobody? I'm the only one that ever feels that way?

One time I was not wanting to be recognized. I was in the mall, and people kept coming up, have a picture. And I started complaining. And God said, "Well, if you'd rather, I can fix it so nobody knows who you are". I said, "Oh, never mind, never mind, never mind. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry". See, everything that you get as a privilege also comes with a responsibility side. You get a car, you get a car payment. You get a bigger house, you get a bigger house payment, you've got more house to clean. And so, maybe you go the extra mile and you get a house cleaning service. Then you don't like the house cleaning service, and you don't like the way they're cleaning the house.

So, there's always something that you got to deal with. I had a dog for twelve years, and I loved that dog. Her name was Duchess, and she was just wonderful. When she was a puppy, we had a couple of people working for us at the house, and they really trained her. I didn't, I was gone so much. You know, a dog is so much better when they're trained, when they don't eat your furniture and go to the bathroom on the floor and all that stuff. So, we had her twelve years and then she had to go to doggy heaven. And so, I wanted another dog. Well, I got another dog, and I think this dog was part devil. I mean the cutest dog you have ever seen, and not a cheap dog. Even the trainer said, "This dog is untrainable, can't be trained".

So, I gave her to the trainer. The trainer gave her to her son, and he couldn't keep her, and he gave her to somebody else. She went through a lot of people. I don't know where she's at now. So, I'm a determined person, and I have now bought and given away four dogs since Duchess. And my daughter told me, and she is absolutely right. She said, "You want a dog, but you don't want the work". So, yesterday I said, "You know, I think I'm about ready for another dog". And I've already got somebody that wants the next one. She's already told me, "Next dog you get, I'll take it". And so, I said, "I've got a better idea. I'm going to borrow a dog for a day or two, and I'll get over it. And then I'll save myself all that money and embarrassment of getting another dog and giving it away".

So, just remember that. Everything that you get as a privilege, there's always another side to it. Y'all are kind of looking at me like, "But I want..." Now remember, there's going to be another side to it. Amen? Causes for Stress. I have 16, and I could have kept going. So, I'll try not to get hung up too much on these points. So, we'll just go through them pretty fast. Worry and hurry. Man, hurry. And you know, it's not just hurrying on the outside; it's hurrying on the inside. Just having one thought after another after another after another, after another rush through your brain, trying to figure all these things out. Too much work, not enough rest. Not enough enjoyment and not enough laughter. We need to laugh. God gave us a laugh.

And the Bible says, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine". It's actually true. One time I had a headache and something funny happened, and I laughed really hard and my headache was gone when I got finished laughing. I mean, it really is like medicine. It's a stress reliever. Laughter is one of the best stress relievers. People-pleasing causes stress. Anger and unforgiveness probably should be number one on the list. There are more people in the church that are angry at somebody than those that are not, and unforgiveness is one of the things that God has told us in multiple places in the Word that we must not have. And yet there are so many people that won't forgive somebody else, and they say, "Well, you don't understand what they did".

To be honest, it doesn't matter. God tells you to forgive people for you, not for them. They may not deserve your forgiveness, but you deserve peace. Amen? And not only that, God never tells you to do something that you can't do. You can get that idea out of your head. God never tells you to do something you can't do. If the Word says to do it, you can do it if you're willing. Guilt. That's a bad one. Hidden sin. Poor diet. I decided yesterday, I was tired. I've been working a little more than I like to lately, and I was real tired. Sometimes when you're real tired, you want to do something you shouldn't do. Anybody ever notice that? And so, I decided that I wanted dessert, and I wanted a lot of it. And to maintain my size, I have to be pretty strict.

And so, I decided I was going to eat dessert and not eat food. I didn't tell you. I didn't tell you because I knew you wouldn't like it. So, I got a cookie, and I put all this icing on it. Then I had a little ice cream. It was a little bowl of ice cream, but put chocolate sauce on that. And I ate that dessert and didn't eat any food, and I got so nervous. The sugar just made me nervous, and I felt terrible after that. Well, how many people are stressed out all the time just because they have a lousy diet? They don't do something like that occasionally. They eat junk every day. Well, you've got a good church. They don't have a problem with anything. I have never seen so many people that can look innocent as this group. I mean, they're all just, how many of you don't get enough sleep? You know what? I've got an answer for you. Go to bed at night. This really isn't rocket science.

How many of you don't drink enough water? Drink some water. We look for all these complicated answers to what we think are all these complicated problems. And to be honest, it's really not that hard. I was having stomach problems. Every single morning, I was being sick to my stomach, not like throwing up sick, but just nauseated. And so, I've learned that if you ask God, He will tell you some things. And so, I was asking God to give me a word of knowledge, show me what's wrong. And I have a little bit of irritable bowel syndrome. And so, I looked on the internet to see what irritated it. And the number one thing on the list was Xylitol. And I had these mints that I ate probably a package and a half of every day. And the number one ingredient was Xylitol.

So, I quit eating the mints, and I quit having a stomach problem. So, just some of you, not all of you, but some of you that feel bad, even stress... You know, one of the things that will give you stress is doing things that God has not anointed you to do. Now, my husband is... Sometimes I wonder if Dave even knows what stress is. I mean, he's just very peaceful. Easiest guy in the world to get along with. Very patient, very generous in forgiveness, kind. He just is very, just not stressful. And he was having what he calls the yips, which was really just he felt stressed. He was shaken inside, you know, like inside. Well, he found out he was doing something that he'd been doing for a long time, but God didn't want him doing it anymore. And it took, our daughter recognized it and shared with him, and he stopped doing it. The yips went away.

So, maybe you're just doing some things that God's no longer anointing you to do, and that's giving you stress. Now, I was abused sexually by my dad from the time I was little bitty, so I grew up with stress. I had stress all my life. I had so much stress, I didn't even know it was stress. So, I was always going to the doctor, because when you have stress, it'll affect your health, trying to find out what was wrong with me, and then they would tell me it was stress, and that would make me mad because I didn't even understand what stress was. I thought stress meant you couldn't handle life. And I'm a strong woman. I can handle life. I do not have stress. Don't tell me I have stress. This is not stress. I even had one doctor tell me to go see a psychiatrist. I had one ask me if I wanted to come to these classes that he was doing on changing your thinking.

I thought I wrote the book. He said, "You're having a battle in your mind". I thought, "I've sold 6 million copies of that book"! Well, if nothing else, you're getting a good laugh tonight. Not enough exercise. "Don't talk to me about exercise, Joyce". Okay. Unresolved issues from the past. You know, it's our secrets that make us sick. You know that? No wonder the Bible says, "Confess your faults to one another, that you may be healed and restored to a spiritual tone of mind and heart". Sometimes you just need to sit down with somebody you can trust and just say, "I just need to get some things out in the open". You don't need to go to a person to get forgiveness. But sometimes we do just need to vent. We just need to talk to somebody. Not to complain or grumble, but just to get rid of it. Fear. Being codependent.

If you're a person who's married to somebody that's hard to get along with and you have to wait to see what kind of mood they're in before you decide what kind of mood you're in, that's being codependent. I had a lot of problems when Dave and I first got married from being abused, and Dave tried for a long time to make me happy, and I didn't know how to be happy. And he finally said, "I don't care what I do, you're not going to be happy. So, I'm finished trying". But he said, "I am going to enjoy my life". And, oh, that made me mad. Made me so mad, because people that aren't happy don't want other people to be happy. But, you know, that was one of the best things that he ever did for me. He didn't become codependent on me. He didn't let my mood ruin his mood. He didn't let my lack of joy take his lack of joy.

And I don't have time to get into all these things that I would love to get into because it's taken me a lifetime to learn them. But if you are in relationship with somebody, whether it's a real good friend or a parent or a spouse or a child that is determined to be unhappy, don't let them steal your joy because you are not helping them by doing that. Actually, what eventually happened was when Dave persisted in being happy, he finally made me hungry for what he had. So, it actually really helped me in the long run. Same way with his peace. He modeled peace in front of me, and I finally thought, "Well, if he can have that, I can have that". So, it doesn't help a person with problems if you let their problems determine how you're going to live your life. He loved me. He said, "I love you, but I'm not going to let you make me unhappy".

Come on, somebody here needs to hear that. Now, I always say Dave kind of got what he deserved, because when he met me, I was washing my mother's car in short shorts, and he pulled up to pick up the guy he was going somewhere with that rented my mom and dad's upstairs flat, and he tried to flirt with me, and I didn't trust men, didn't like men. And I said, well, I liked men, but I didn't trust them. And he said, "Hey, when you're finished washing that car, you want to wash mine"? I said, "If you want your car washed, buddy, wash it yourself". Well, he'd been praying for a wife and boy, he made a mistake. He said, "God, make it somebody that needs help". Honestly, that's what he prayed, Tada.

So, I don't feel sorry for him. He got what he asked for. Another real stressor is people. I can be really happy till the people come. Ever feel like that? I mean, when I first got into the things of God, I would play my Christian music all day and pray in the spirit and listen to my teaching tapes. They were tapes back then. Now they're something else. I don't even know what they are. Downloads. That's what it is, downloads. And I'm just so spiritual. Then all my kids had come home from school, and I was like... It's easy to be peaceful when there's no people around. Sickness can give you a lot of stress, just circumstances, the world today, just all the negativity in the world today. So, the bottom line is that if you want to have peace, you're going to have to want it really, really bad.

1 Peter 3:11 says that if you want peace, you have to seek it and pursue it. "Seek" means to go after with all your strength. Pursue it. Seek it and pursue it. It's not going to fall on you like ripe fruit falling off a tree. You have to really want it, and you have to be willing to change. Is there anybody here that would be willing to change anything you need to change just to have peace? Okay, well, God saw your hand, so get ready. But I love what it says in the Amplified Bible in 1 Peter 3:11, it says that if you want to enjoy life and have good days, good, whether apparent or not, turn from evil and do good, seek peace, well, the Amplified says, "seek it eagerly. [Do not merely desire peaceful relations with God, with your fellow man, and with yourself, but pursue, go after them!]"

And so, you're never going to have peace with other people or even peace with your circumstances if you don't have any peace with yourself. And that's really where most of our problems come from. A lot of people just don't like themselves. I know because I live through that. When I first got started hearing preaching and hearing how we all need to love each other, I wanted to love people, but I just couldn't, and I didn't know what the problem was. And God taught me. He said, "You can't love anybody else because you don't love yourself. And if you don't have love in you, you can't give it away". You can't give somebody something that you don't have. God's love is shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Spirit when we're born again.

So, we have love in us. But if you don't love yourself, you're not receiving that love. And I'm not talking about being in love with yourself and selfish and self-centered. I'm talking about loving the you that God created you to be. Amen? And if you start to love yourself and have peace with yourself, you'll be amazed at how easy it is to love other people and have peace with them. A lot of our problems start at home base. Amen? I started paying attention to what my peace stealers were. You should do that. If you want to have more peace, start paying attention to what it is that upsets you. What upsets you? What drives you to that point where you lose your peace? I don't do well if I have to hurry a lot.

So, I've learned to leave a little more time. I don't like being pressured. I don't like to feel like, "Oh, I've got to preach in three days, and I don't have my messages yet". So, I stay way ahead on all that stuff. I have a contract with a publisher that's three years at a time, and I'm a year ahead on my writing because I don't like to be pressured, to feel like I have to get this manuscript to them by... And so, if you get stressed out in the mornings trying to get out of the house, then go to bed a little bit earlier and get up a little bit earlier. Do a few things the night before that will help you the next morning so you have a little more time. The book that pastor showed you is based out of Philippians 4:6-7, and it is the whole answer to anxiety. You say, "The whole answer in one scripture"? Yes. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving".

The more thankful you are, the less anxiety you have, because the more thankful you are for what you have, the less upset you are about what you don't have. Amen? "Present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus", unto life everlasting. So, in that book, I do it in four parts, and I talk about the anxiety, that every situation, be thankful. Pray about everything. Your first response to everything should be to pray. And then peace, how valuable peace is. In the Amplified Bible it says in Colossians 3:15 that we should let peace be the umpire in our life. And we all know what an umpire is, he decides whether something's in or out. and we should let peace be the umpire in our life, deciding whether something is in or it's out. If I can't do it with peace, then it's not from God. Amen?

A foolish person recognizes his problem and refuses to do anything about it, the Bible says. They want somebody else to do it for them. Somebody else should fix this. Don't blame the world or the people in your world. Take responsibility for your own peace and start asking God, "What can I do about this"? Let me remind you about what I said in the beginning. Make a list of everything you're doing and then honestly look at each one and say, "What kind of fruit is this bearing in my life"? And even better, ask yourself what your motive is for doing it. If you're doing it just to keep somebody else happy. You know what I found out? I lived a portion of my life.

There was a church that we were going to, and I wanted to be in with this certain group of people. In order to do that, you had to have favor with this one certain woman. And in order to get that, you had to do everything she wanted you to do. And I got into that trap for a while, and you know what I found out? When push came to shove, she didn't care anything about me. People who want to control you don't love you. They don't. Anybody who really loves you, if you say to them, "I would like to be able to do what you asked me to, but I just can't. I got too much on my plate right now, or I don't have peace about doing it". If anybody really loves you, they should honor that and say, "I don't want you to do anything you don't feel right about". Not get mad because you're not keeping them happy. You're alive to obey God and love Him, not to keep everybody else on the planet happy. And you can't be a God pleaser and a people pleaser.

You have to be one of the two. There's four things that Jesus did to manage stress. He trusted Himself and everything to God. 1 Peter 2:23. "When He was reviled and insulted, He did not revile or offer insult in return; [when] He was abused and suffered, He made no threats [of vengeance]; but he trusted [Himself and everything] to Him Who judges fairly". He prayed about everything. He'd walk away from a crowd and go pray. I guess if He was just feeling too much pressure, He'd just walk away from them and go pray. Many times in the Bible, we see Jesus do that. And I love this. He knew when to be quiet. Seriously. John 14:30, He said to His disciples, "'I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me...'"

He knew that it was just about time for Him to go to Jerusalem and suffer. And apparently he knew that it was not a good time to say the wrong thing. You know, when you're under stress, that's a good time to make a decision, "I think I'm just going to be quiet". Like some days if I just don't feel real good or something, I'll just tell Dave, "I don't feel real good today. I'm probably going to be a little quiet". And I'm sure he's glad. He's like, "Yeah, just be quiet". Listen to Matthew 27. "When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer". Why? Because He knew His own heart. He didn't have to try to convince them that He was a good guy. "Then Pilate asked him, 'Don’t you hear the testimony they are bringing against you?' But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge", did He make a reply. God has had to teach me that, "You don't have to try to prove to people that you're right. If you need to be proven to be in the right, I'll take care of that". Amen?

And the last thing that Jesus did was He always forgave. Always, always. He forgave Peter. On the cross, He prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". And that's about half of my message, but sadly, I'm out of time. So, you still got a lot, right? Did you get what you wanted? Okay, listen, let's all stand up. We're going to pray a prayer together. I don't want anybody to leave here tonight that doesn't know Jesus. So, we're going to do this a little different. We're going to all pray this prayer together, and then anybody who has never received Christ, get ready. Let's just pray:

Father God, I love You. Jesus, I believe in You. I believe that You are God, the Son of God. I believe You died for me, You paid for my sin, You took my guilt, and You set me free. Forgive my sins and help me to live for You. Jesus, I receive You now, and I surrender my life to You. Now, I believe I'm saved. This is a new beginning, and I want to live for You. Help me do that. Amen.